Director of Financial Markets at the Bank of Ghana, Stephen Opata has expressed optimism that the 2023 cocoa crop season will be better than last year considering the variability and sustainability of the cocoa sector.
” If you compare this year’s crop season to last year’s crop season, this is going to be much better. This is a business that is still very variable and sustainable, and we expect that they should be able to meet their cash flow going forward,”
He was speaking on the back of Bank of Ghana agreeing to pay to allow commercial banks to use COCOBOD’s deposits/placements at the various banks to reduce the cash flow challenges on retail holders of cocoa bills, who may not want a rollover of their investments.
Mr. Opata attributed the newly under-subscribed cocoa bills to the uncertainty around the government’s domestic debt exchange program.
This, he said, has slowed down investment making BoG’s new six months cocoa bill auction raise on behalf of COCOBOD to be severely under-subscribed resulting in a shortfall of Eight Hundred and Fifty-Five point Five Four Two million cedis.
Mr. Opata further added that, COCOBOD look for other cash proceeds that they have with the banks in order not to put undue unexpected hardship due to they not receiving these cashflows.
He also assured retail investors of payment of their funds.
